Basic Attention Token (BAT) is a utility token on Ethereum (ERC-20) that powers Brave Rewards, the incentive system built into the Brave web browser.
Users earn BAT for viewing privacy-respecting advertisements in Brave and can tip or contribute BAT to publishers and creators. The token contract was deployed on Ethereum on 2017-05-29 by Brave Software, Inc., the company that also develops the Brave browser.
Basic Attention Token (BAT) ties its utility to an integrated browser's user base rather than a standalone DeFi protocol. Brave reported 104.8 million monthly active users and 46.27 million daily active users as of December 2025.
This consumer-facing distribution channel is uncommon among reward tokens, giving BAT built-in demand from ad-viewing and creator-tipping rather than protocol fees. On-chain trading volume remains thin relative to this user base, indicating most BAT activity happens through Brave's own rewards flow rather than decentralized exchanges.
Basic Attention Token (BAT) is a utility token, not a governance token: it carries no on-chain voting rights over Brave or the BAT protocol.
Holders use BAT to tip or contribute to publishers and creators, while Brave browser users earn BAT as a reward for viewing privacy-respecting ads. Brave has also expanded self-custody payouts, letting eligible users receive earned BAT directly into a personal Solana wallet as a Wormhole-bridged token.
Basic Attention Token (BAT) has a fixed maximum supply of 1,500,000,000 BAT with no ongoing minting.
Net emission is effectively zero: circulating supply cannot exceed the 1.5 billion cap, and the token is neither inflationary nor subject to a burn mechanism.
Basic Attention Token (BAT) launched through a public token sale on 2017-05-31, raising approximately $35 million (156,250 ETH) in under 30 seconds at an ICO price near $0.036 per token.
The BAT contract was deployed on Ethereum on 2017-05-29, two days before the sale; Brave Software was founded in May 2015, about two years earlier.
Basic Attention Token (BAT) is natively deployed on Ethereum as an ERC-20 token, with no separate BAT-specific blockchain or validator set.
Ethereum secures the network through proof-of-stake consensus, in which validators stake ETH to propose and attest to blocks; BAT transfers settle under Ethereum's consensus rules rather than any BAT-specific mechanism. Bridged representations of BAT also exist on other chains, including Solana, Polygon, and Avalanche, but the Ethereum contract remains the canonical token.
Basic Attention Token (BAT) was created by Brave Software, Inc., co-founded in May 2015 by Brendan Eich and Brian Bondy.
Basic Attention Token (BAT) is issued and maintained by Brave Software, Inc., the company that develops the Brave privacy-focused web browser.
Brave Software operates the Brave Rewards program that distributes BAT to users and enables tipping to publishers and creators, and maintains the project's official channels, including basicattentiontoken.org and the github.com/brave-intl/publishers repository. BAT serves as the reward and utility token for Brave's ad and creator-support ecosystem.
Basic Attention Token (BAT) has no on-chain governance mechanism or token-holder voting process; it is a company-issued utility token controlled by Brave Software, Inc.
Decisions about BAT's issuance, rewards distribution, and development roadmap are made internally by Brave Software rather than through a decentralized autonomous organization or community proposal-and-vote system. Separately, the Internet Computer ecosystem's own governance approved a proposal to add a wrapped "ckBAT" representation on its chain, but that vote governs Internet Computer integration, not BAT's own governance.
Brave announced BAT Roadmap 4.0 on 2026-07-09, expanding BAT beyond digital-ad rewards into a broader transactional attention economy.
Basic Attention Token (BAT)'s original contract was audited by OpenZeppelin around its May 2017 token sale, which flagged and led to fixing an issue in Brave's own allocation refund logic. Callisto Network's security department separately audited the contract, reporting zero high-severity, one medium-severity, and three low-severity issues.
CertiK's Skynet dashboard scores BAT's overall security at 91.37 ("AA"), noting BAT is not CertiK-audited itself but lists two third-party audits. Holder concentration is a structural risk: the top 10 holders control 42% of supply, and on-chain liquidity is thin relative to BAT's roughly $102 million market cap.